I suppose - but that still shows a remarkable lack of preparation, to only have weak barriers in such an important section. It also shows that whoever made that happen either was stupid and short-sighted, or didn't care about the lives of scientists.

If the Generals were in another room, though, which they obviously were, how quickly could they react? Those barriers probably couldn't have held the akuma for as long as it would have taken for the Generals to get there.

Even if the HQ was never attacked in the past, the presence of an akuma at the Asia branch should have been enough to increase security.

Several minutes? If the barrier set by Noah didn't intefere, Generals would've beein able to get there much faster. But because of the barrier they had to go through Ark, which dramatically deleyed their arrival to the battlefield.

Of course, no matter the excuses the defence present in HQ is horribly weak, even higher-ups are potentially endangered. So two question come to mind: why did they never fortify their defences and why Earl never attacked? He could easily solved all his problems with exorcists right away. Hell, he can even take all the innocence Order possesses - Hevlaska is there too. Maybe he simply doesn't care about them?

Maybe they were, we do not know how the defence was organised before, exept for gatekeeper. It seems that they did not expect anyone to attack from any direction beside front gate - because in case with attack from anywhere else gatekeeper is useless. And he basically is - when Allen showed up everyone was liek "WTF?!" - they totally did not expect anyone to come - meaning they were never actually attacked before. Which probably made them think that Akuma would never dare to come near HQ.

It seems that the Earl only seriously began to put his plans into action in recent months (Road said it hadn't yet begun during the Rewinding Town arc). If that's the case, then there wouldn't have been a lot of time to attack the Order - just a few weeks when Allen/Lenalee were recovering and then travelling to China. The Order was hardly inactive during that time, either; the Generals were being protected and brought back to the Order because of Yeegar's death. It's still confusing as to why the Order did very little to defend itself (not just the Generals) when this began.

It's possible that the Order must contact the Vatican if it wants to make any changes, or discuss things with those boss guys. What a bureaucracy.

Nothing prevented Earl to destory his major enemy before pushing "Apocalypsis ON" button. Hell, considering Generals were never inside HQ, he could have attacked them by himself, he has more than enough power to defeat Linalee, for example. But he never did that. This makes me think that he simply does not care about them.

Problems with bureaucracy are unavoidable when it comes to huge organisations.

The Order has had a large number of Exorcists, though - something like twenty when the Earl would have started his "scenario" (or whatever it is). That number has since decreased thanks to his actions. With an army of mostly level 1 akuma, the Exorcists in the Order would have had no problem defeating those forces. Obviously, the Earl is planning to do much more than destroy the Order, so wouldn't it be just as logical to get rid of some of the Order's numbers, then attack when his own forces are strong to avoid losing many of them?